PokerStars Festival Manila: High Roller fires up

This 11-day tournament series is already in full swing as we pick up coverage for the High Roller event. We're in the Grand Ballroom at City of Dreams Casino where those joining the action will post up the PHP215,000 (~$4,300) entry fee and have their eyes on the title, the trophy, and the lion's share of the prize pool.

The plan for tonight is to play 11 40-minute levels with blinds starting at 50/100 and stacks at 50,000. This is a shot clock event so players will have 30 seconds to act on their hands and three time bank chips to use at their discretion. The High Roller features unlimited re-entries all day today and for the first level of Day 2 tomorrow.

The field is still relatively small at this stage with 16 runners in contention but that's expected to change throughout today's proceedings. Two who have joined the hunt are live satellite qualifiers John Plater and Timofey Asmolov. They both turned PHP33,000 into a High Roller ticket and will be looking for an even bigger return on their investment here this week.

Timofey Asmolov

Another who might jump in at some stage is current Asia Player of the Year frontrunner Sparrow Cheung. He's had a sensational start to this festival having usurped the APOY lead from Alan Lau by claiming two cashes, two final tables and one title here in Manila. Cheung emerged victorious in the PHP55,000 Deepstack Event after navigating his way to the final table and ultimately overcoming Lau and Pete Chen three-handed. Cheung has already locked up over $10,000 in cashes over the last few days and time will tell if he joins the High Roller to keep the hot streak going.

That about sums things up at this stage. We'll have all the stories from PokerStars Festival Manila right here on the PokerStars Blog. For all your live reporting needs you can visit our friends over at PokerNews, and get involved using the hashtag #PSFManila.